apparentely, MSVC uses a few insecure optimizations counting that the developer created a secure code. Probably thats why its debug build is slower.

I've seen lots of situations where gcc code gives a error right away, and promptly showing me and bug and MSVC happily executing a code until it finally stumble upon a non-static field of a class and finally giving a error. For me , this is simple misleading and thats why I prefer gcc

Someone should write some "C" code and a few scripts that will enable / disable every compiler option and then print out which options worked best for _your_ particular system.

A benchmark that would specifically test each option (as opposed to using a single benchmark, and huge) could be written.

EG: no point in benchmarking if we should use:
gcc -O2 -O3 code.c -- One disables the other

gcc -fno-gcse SSE2_code.c

Benchmarks need to have a 'large' effect on the option that is being switched.

This could be ran overnight (or on multiple machines, each doing part of the testing) and results provided on a web page somewhere.

Experts could put in thier two cents and a wiki of snipperts could
be fed into a code compilator (not compiler, just a bunch of scripts) that would compilate all the snippets and produce a final program to be compiled on many different machines.

This way we could figure out that if we had such-and-such a system then "how-often" (what % of the time) would we simply be better off
to use a particular option and when is it more likely based on that TYPE of program we are running (wordprocessor vs. MultiMedia app).

EG: If you have a Pentium is is ALWAYS (or should be if gcc is correct) best to use the -march=pentium option - BUT - it is NOT always best to use "-fcrossjumping" (though it _could_ be for certain applications).

The output of all this could simply be a half dozen command line choices for each processor - including a "general purpose 'best'" setting and a "quick compile with great optimization" setting (for intermediate builds).

This is something that a few dozen people need to work on to get the ball rolling and then the rest of us need to pitch in and compile the resulting test scripts to check for errors. With everyone's help we should have the so-called answer(S) to "which compilation options should I use for machine-X when compiling applcation=category Y.